Recently CCB officially implemented the ERP financial system (first phase), the biggest of its kind so far applied in the Chinese financial industry. It is said that the bank’s ERP system (first phase) which contains three modules, i.e. general ledger, operation and assets and aims at improving financial information disclosure and basic financial management ability is one of the most important information technology projects following its DCC initiative. Since the project involves a wide range of implementation, radical changes in management and operational process, connections with external systems and in-house departments, difficult coordination, complicated IT application and tight deadline and CCB is the first domestic bank applying the system, it has no reference at all. However, with 14 months of hard work, the bank managed to ensure the successful launch of the system. The operation of the general ledger module under the ERP financial system, which is the first unified, centralized and integrated general ledger ever established in CCB’s history, throughout the bank’s 38 domestic branches and headquarters has raised the accuracy and timeliness of the general ledger statistics and offered more accurate, timely and detailed general ledger information for the bank’s operation and management. Referring to the experience of leading international commercial banks, the module integrates financial accounting with management accounting, designs a flexible chart of accounts covering business lines and major products and sorts out the expenditure accounts, paving the way for making detailed financial analysis and exercising the multi-dimensional performance evaluation. The general ledger module also enables a top-down release of account statistics and statements under which the headquarters is responsible for formulating various financial statements and management statements and standardizing the use of the general ledger, which allows the automatic generation of important financial management statements and well facilitates the check and analysis of business plan implementation and the profitability of major products or services. The automatic generation of statements based on the headquarters’ general ledger also ensures the consistency and reliability of statistics. So far the operation and assets modules of the ERP system (first phase) have been implemented in CCB headquarters as well as its Shandong and Xiamen branches, which helps the headquarters strengthen the financial control over its branches, integrates the assets information with physical information and builds the platform to enhance the standardization, accuracy and management of assets accounting. The ERP system unifies and optimizes the general ledger management and basic financial management process of CCB, initially builds the technological platform for its standard and centralized basic financial management, creates the necessary conditions for the future implementation of comprehensive financial system and modern financial management ability and will have a far reaching influence on the bank’s future growth. |